Teaching for Mastery

We began our journey back in September 2017 and since then Teaching for Mastery at Grovelands is underpinned by the belief that all children can succeed with mathematics if they work hard and have a “can do attitude.” Teaching is interactive and this approach fits well with our growth mind set philosophy “Mistakes help us learn” and “I can grow my brain.”

Our maths team have delivered lots of training to all the staff at Grovelands and we are committed to developing Teaching for Mastery in Maths across the school.

What does Teaching for Mastery look like at Grovelands now.

1

Children are taught in mixed attainment groups with fluid and focused group work for teaching and learning particular concepts – as needed. Classes are kept closer together, working on similar concepts.

1

CPA approach: Planning has a concrete, pictorial and abstract approach because we believe that ALL PUPILS, when introduced to a key new concept need the opportunity to build competency in this area by experiencing concrete, pictorial and abstract representations of a concept. Moving between these approaches enables pupils to connect abstract symbols with familiar contexts, which supports pupils in making sense of maths.

1

We are working to reduce differences in attainment for our struggling learners whilst at the same time offering rich mathematical opportunities for all to acquire a greater depth of understanding.

1

Additional support may be given in the following ways: further use of equipment (to expose the structure of the maths), careful directed questioning, additional time or small group support to consolidate understanding. These vary according to the needs of each child and may take place outside of the mathematics lesson.
We are working towards a model of same day/ next day intervention to enable all children to ‘keep up not catch up’.

1

A ‘Growth Mindset’ is encouraged (across the curriculum).
We are developing a split lesson timetable to ensure that all children engaged with the real life learning hook and were exposed to the structure of the maths through carefully chosen concrete equipment and pictorial representations. The split lesson also ensures the teacher can identify children who need further consolidation and rapid intervention so that they can proceed with the rest of the class

1

Fluency – frequent additional practice is encouraged to support children’s fluency in number bonds, mental calculation strategies, multiplication and division facts. To embed fluency, we are developing the use of a counting stick for 5 minutes every day across the school and in KS1 we are using key fluency facts.

1

Problem Solving - Children are given opportunities to solve problems that enable them to use and apply the skills they have been taught.

1

Reasoning - Reasoning forms a key part of every mathematics session at Grovelands. Key questions are planned into every session and children are given opportunities to explain their thinking. Teachers are exploring the use of ‘stem’ sentences which the whole class say and repeat to support the language development of mathematical reasoning. (Using sentence stems like: “I notice…”, “ I know this is true because…”, If I know this then I must know that…” )

1

Using the correct mathematical vocabulary is very important, so that the pupils are able to explain in detail how their answers were obtained, why the method/ strategy worked and what might be the most efficient method/strategy.

1

Challenge is provided in every lesson for all children. These challenges encourage children to think more deeply about the mathematical concepts. They are offered rich and sophisticated problems rather than any acceleration through new content.

1

Engaging parents - parent workshops are offered to support parents and carers in supporting their children with mathematics.

Assessment

Teachers record formative assessment against the national curriculum objectives. Our assessment systems allow teachers to quickly identify underachievement and any gaps in knowledge and understanding that can then be swiftly addressed through the planning and teaching cycle.